Our Say: How we can help bring offenders to justice

What has the world come to when we have elderly people being attacked in their workplace on a Friday afternoon?

An incident last week which saw a worker attacked by four people at the driving range is a sign of why people in Dubbo are being asked to be so much more vigilant now than we have been in the past.

Crime isn’t a new phenomenon in our city, but things have gone to a new level in recent times.

Record numbers of break-and-enters, combined with incidents such as the one last Friday, have residents on edge – and rightly so.

The driving range incident came just days after an intruder broke into an East Dubbo home at 7am, leaving with jewellery and an iPad. All this while a child was in the house

Over the past few months the Daily Liberal has been publishing a series of reports titled ‘Break The Burglars’ to inform the community on the best ways to try to avoid being a statistic on the monthly break-and-enter figures.

Another reason for the series is to promote community vigilance and a willingness to not only help our local police by locking up homes and cars, but also provide them with more of the type of information that has seen several significant arrests made.

That same level of public help is now needed to help bring the perpetrators of Friday’s disgusting incident ,and the home invasion a couple of days before, to justice.

It’s bad enough that people don’t feel safe in their homes at 7am, but when violent attacks are occuring in workplaces that is taking things to a whole new level.

We can’t expect businesses to lock up like we expect homeowners to. That goes against the basic principle of business.

Rather than make it hard for people to re-offend we have to capture those responsible to ensure they don’t strike again – prevention is better than cure.

Anyone who may have seen four people – two men and two women – lurking around the northern end of Fitzroy Street after 5pm on Friday is asked to contact Dubbo Police Station on 6883 1599 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

A police force is only as good as the information given to it, and while the detectives are on the case trying to find the offenders, every little piece of information comes in handy.

It’s in everyone’s best interests to get these people off our streets.